Gregory Harrington is the violinist on this excellent and highly
recommendable CD of small-scale works by James MacMillan. He
characterises the composer's music in his introductory text
as beautiful and sublime, eliciting emotions that reach the
bottom of your inner being and touch the senses in a way that
transforms the soul.

Significantly, Harrington, pianist Simon Mulligan and cellist
Caroline Stinson don't then set out to prove how true this might
be. They simply play MacMillan's translucent and yet penetrating
music in a way that allows you to hear every nuance, every phrase
and every subtlety of texture. They are consciously quiet ambassadors,
not orators. Their playing is close, intimate and recorded in
such as way that you can almost hear the horse-hair fray on
the bow, the fingers slide on the keys. Yet it's neither intrusive
nor overblown playing. Just very bare and honest.

The result is that you come away with a conviction that the
'beauty' and 'sublimeness' which you remember from the last
time you listened to MacMillan - perhaps to his better known,
larger, choral works - were there; No, you were not mistaken.
The substance, the gentleness and nuance of his harmonies, hints
at some timbres not usually associated with these instruments,
and his occupancy of a space between tonality and atonality
are all successful and solid.

The pieces are relatively short. Only each of the two parts
into which the lovely Fourteen Little Pictures is divided
lasts more than ten minutes… After the Tryst; Walfrid,
on His Arrival at the Gates of Paradise; 25th May 1967; In angustiis…
I last five or less. But they are not miniatures. They encapsulate
much. There is an intensity, a sense of power, of substance
and purpose that these three players make almost palpable.

Kiss on Wood, has strong devotional connections … the
cross at the crucifixion. While A Different World was
written when MacMillan was working on his opera, Inès de
Castro. It seems to have the same sense of longing (for
change, peace, fulfilment) that characterises much of this mostly
slow and reflective music.

After the Tryst picks up on MacMillan's earlier ballad
setting; again, there's extreme compactness and concentration.
Again, the thoughtfulness and insight which MacMillan brings
to all of this music are never actually stated, never laboured
by the players. But they are as clear and obvious as if the
composer were talking you through each of his intentions, the
degrees to which he had succeeded, and how the ideas had emerged
- and been very successfully realised.

Similarly, the Fourteen Little Pictures for all that
they're individual pieces are 'stitched together' (MacMillan's
phrase) as a whole. They are distilled, understated, written
in such a way that each note and chord carries a huge weight
- to much purpose. For many listeners their beauty and concentration
will be the highpoint of this gem of a collection. As with other
pieces on this CD references, resonances, recapitulations, restatements
and other common threads are vital. But these are not the same
as repetitions or variations. Rather, an appeal to commonalities.

Walfrid was written for a sporting occasion in Glasgow
with special local and probably (Scottish) national significance.
It exemplifies the breadth and reach of MacMillan's musical
and cultural vision. MacMillan was eight on 25th May 1967; the
piece of that name celebrates another sportsperson, also the
composer's dentist! Although the composer describes 25th
May 1967 as 'a brief flourish of boyish delight', it too
has significance, power and pertinence. Why not!

In angustiis was the original title of Haydn's Mass
in Time of War. MacMillan's piece was written after September
11 2001 in a spirit of melancholy; indeed, it includes a variation
on L'homme armé as befits times of conflict.

The two impressions with which you'll come away after even a
single sitting with this CD are of the music's immense beauty
and powerful economy. And the extent to which the three players
honour and convey those and MacMillan's other gifts.

Technically, their playing is superb. It never stands in the
way of a low key yet vital empathy they have with the idiom,
the Scottish idiom too, and the ranges of emotion from the wry
and unselfconsciously lighthearted to the extremely poignant
and profound which MacMillan has written in this collection.
It's a collection, by the way, in which the order of whose works
provides a nice sense of contrast. Yet the sequence continually
reinforces MacMillan's restrained melancholy.

The acoustic and recording could not be better; and there is
just the right amount of material and background on pieces and
players - and the composer - in the (rather small-font-sized)
booklet that comes with a CD that contains recordings otherwise
unavailable on CD. Don't hesitate. If you're already a MacMillan
collector, you'll want this one. If you want to see whether
you might become one, let A Different World convince
you.

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